The present invention relates generally to a row crop harvester and particularly to an improved corn head to pick up loose ears from the ground.
Agricultural machinery has developed to the state where individual farmers can prepare, plant, tend and harvest great acreages of land. However, because of limitations inherent in the machinery itself, harvesting of certain crops is incomplete and inefficient, resulting in large quantities of valuable crops being left in the field and wasted. These unharvested crops have previously been considered as not completely wasted because they provided feed for wild game. However, the exploding costs of machinery, fuel and labor in bringing crops to harvest have made it essential to maximize harvest yields.
A prime example is in the harvesting of corn where conventional harvester combines effectively harvest corn attached to stalks, but do not pick up loose ears from the ground.
The scope of this problem is illustrated by studies conducted by the inventors in Kansas in 1982. They found that in an average year losses caused by loose ears which could not be picked up by conventional harvesting combines varied from one to twenty percent of the harvested yield. They determined that a realistic, conservative, average loose ear loss for the entire corn growing areas in Kansas would be at least seven percent of the total crop harvested. While this might be considered a normal loss for an average year, it could be increased to the point of economic ruin for a farmer heavily planted in corn during years of high corn borer or wind damage or a combination of both.
A modern corn harvester combine is a very efficient means of harvesting corn as long as it remains attached to the stalk, but it will not collect ears of corn that have fallen from the stalks before harvest, and it does a poor job picking up wind- or rain-lodged corn. Many farmers have been plagued by the problems of loose ears and lodged stalks. In the past, they have been forced either to leave the corn in the field, pick it up by hand, or graze livestock in the stubble to utilize the lost grain.
The inventors have conducted extensive literature searches which indicate that no machine has ever been produced that picked up both lodged corn and loose ears that had dropped to the ground. Applicants are aware of only one patent which even addresses the problem of picking up loose ears from the ground. This is Lange U.S. Patent No. 3,719,034 issued Mar. 6, 1973 on "Harvester Sweeper". No commercial application or availability of this particular machine is known. There is serious doubt that it would function effectively because the construction appears more likely to push ears of corn aside rather than pick them up.